Conventional fabric fluid treatment processes designed to enhance the surface characteristics of fabrics have been limited to use on fabrics including spun yarns, in order that sufficient fiber free ends are available for the fluid treatment process to raise and entangle, and to form the surface effect. Conventionally, fluid treatment processes have not been considered to be effective on fabrics made primarily from filament fibers, such as all filament fabrics. One attempt to use a hydraulic treatment process to enhance an all-filament fabric is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,806,155 to Malaney et al. That patent describes the use of a hydraulic treatment process to “uniformly and continuously” impact an all-filament woven fabric at a particular level of energy in order to achieve controlled porosity and uniform spacing of the yarns. However, as acknowledged by Malaney in that reference, there are no free fiber ends in the fabric to be entangled or which can be used to form a surface effect on the fabric. (For purposes of this invention, the term “surface effect” is intended to describe a nap or pile of fibers on the surface of the fabric, which provide it with a variety of characteristics, e.g. softness, increased compression, etc.)
Spun yarns are commonly used in the production of fabrics for a variety of end uses, in particular, where aesthetics such as a soft hand are desired. As will be readily appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art, spun yarns are those made from a plurality of relatively short fibers (i.e. staple fibers) that are formed into a yarn that is typically held together by twist. Some disadvantages that are commonly associated with spun yarns are that they are often not as strong as their filament counterparts and they can tend to degrade during use and laundering, leading to the production of lint, fabric weight loss, and loss of fabric strength. In addition, fabrics made from spun yarns tend to retain soil to a greater extent than fabrics made from filaments.
Fabrics made from filaments thus are generally considered to have greater strength and soil release performance than those made from spun yarns, though they generally are not considered to be as soft or aesthetically pleasing as the fabrics made from spun yarns. Therefore, yarns made from filaments are often put through a texturing process designed to bulk out the filaments and make them more compressible and pleasant to the touch. However, fabrics made from the textured filaments are still considered to have only limited to no surface effect, and considerably less surface effect than a comparable fabric made from spun yarns.
One market that has capitalized on the features of filaments is the napery market, and in particular, the rental laundry market. The rental laundry market demands that the fabrics used in the manufacture of its tablecloths and napkins be highly durable, in order that the items can be re-used and laundered a large number of times. In addition, such items need to have good soil release, and need to have a good feel or hand, particularly when they will be used as napkins, since they will contact the user's face.
As noted above, filaments are considered to provide greater durability and soil release than spun yarns. As also noted previously, the fabrics made from filaments have a rough feel and limited to no surface effect. In an attempt to overcome this disadvantage, fabrics made from filaments are typically sanded or otherwise abraded to produce some cut fibers at the fabric surface. However, to achieve an amount of abrasion sufficient to alter the surface characteristics of the fabric, it is typically required that the fabric construction present sufficient available fiber lengths to the abrasion device, in order that an acceptable hand can be achieved at an acceptable level of strength. (See FIG. 1, which illustrates the effect that abrasion intensity as applied to a plain weave fabric has on fabric tear strength.)
In order to present yarn floats that are sufficiently long to receive an effective amount of abrasion by the abrading process, it is customary to provide the fabrics in a 2×1 weave construction. (As will be readily appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art, this construction provides a plurality of staggered yarn floats, where a yarn extending in one direction crosses over two or more yarns extending in the other direction. In this way, the float can be sufficiently acted upon by the abrasive action.) Not only does this construction provide greater fiber availability for the abrasion process, but this weave construction is typically considered to have better tear strength as compared with a plain weave construction made from the same yarns.
One problem posed by this construction is that the longer floats have a tendency to pick and snag. When this occurs, filaments or even a whole yarn are pulled outwardly from the fabric, resulting in an unsightly looking defect in the product. These picks and snags can occur routinely from fabric use or from the laundering process, and are a common cause of rental napery products being withdrawn from use. Despite the above-noted disadvantages associated with the 2×1 construction, prior to the present invention, it had been considered to be the only acceptable construction for a filament napery fabric with acceptable surface effects.